The advances in technology have made today's society a more paperless and wireless society. The emergence of global computer and communication networks enable people to communicate instantly and transmit various types of data through these communication networks. In addition to the advancements in computer and communication networks, the technology that provides for communication via the telephone has also made substantial advances in the past two decades. Historically, a telephone network comprised a telephone connected to a central switching box/location. These switching locations were connected through networks of cables. Many of these communication cables were large lines that contained many small communication wires that carried the telephone information. Today, telephone communications are much more sophisticated than the traditional telephone networks. The basic telephone network having a telephone connected to a switching box does still exist. However, because of the variety of telephones that are in use, today's telephone communication network configurations include the basic telephone network and other communication means and devices.
The use of the telephone in a wireless network configuration has made telephone communication more convenient. Because many people access global communication networks such as the Internet via a telephone, it appears that a logical progression of technology would lead to the development of technologies that incorporate wireless telephone devices as part of global computer and communication networks.
As shown in FIG. 1, telephone communication networks incorporate both wireless and physical connection devices. Communication towers 10 and 11 provide the connection means for mobile and wireless devices within this network. Each tower has a defined area in which the tower provides wireless telephone connections. As shown, tower 10 serves mobile devices 12, 13, and 14. Tower 11 serves mobile devices 15 and 16. Within a defined area, the tower will facilitate the connection of wireless devices to the telephone network. This connection will enable a wireless device 16 to connect to other wireless devices or to conventional and stationary devices such as homes, factories and office buildings.
Referring to FIG. 2, there is depicted a pictorial representation of a distributed computer network environment 20. As may be seen, distributed data processing system 20 may include a plurality of networks, such as Local Area Networks (LAN) 21 and 22, each of which preferably includes a plurality of individual computers 23 and 24, respectively. Of course, those skilled in the art will appreciate that a plurality of Intelligent Work Stations (IWS) coupled to a host processor may be utilized for each such network. Any of the processing systems may also be connected to the Internet as shown. As is common in such data processing systems, each individual computer may be coupled to a storage device 25 and/or a printer/output device 26. One or more such storage devices 25 may be utilized, in accordance with the method of the present invention, to store the various data objects or documents which may be periodically accessed and processed by a user within distributed data processing system 20, in accordance with the method and system of the present invention. In a manner well known in the prior art, each such data processing procedure or document may be stored within a storage device 25 which is associated with a Resource Manager or Library Service, which is responsible for maintaining and updating all resource objects associated therewith.
Still referring to FIG. 2, it may be seen that distributed data processing system 20 may also include multiple mainframe computers, such as mainframe computer 27, which may be preferably coupled to Local Area Network (LAN) 21 by means of communications link 28. Mainframe computer 27 may also be coupled to a storage device 29 which may serve as remote storage for Local Area Network (LAN) 21. A second Local Area Network (LAN) 22 may be coupled to Local Area Network (LAN) 21 via communications controller 31 and communications link 32 to a gateway server 33. Gateway server 33 is preferably an individual computer or Intelligent Work Station (IWS), which serves to link Local Area Network (LAN) 22 to Local Area Network (LAN) 21. As discussed above with respect to Local Area Network (LAN) 22 and Local Area Network (LAN) 21, a plurality of data processing procedures or documents may be stored within storage device 29 and controlled by mainframe computer 27, as Resource Manager or Library Service for the data processing procedures and documents thus stored. Of course, those skilled in the art will appreciate that mainframe computer 27 may be located a great geographical distance from Local Area Network (LAN) 21 and similarly Local Area Network (LAN) 21 may be located a substantial distance from Local Area Network (LAN) 24. That is, Local Area Network (LAN) 24 may be located in California while Local Area Network (LAN) 21 may be located within Texas and mainframe computer 27 may be located in New York.
FIG. 3 is an illustration of a computer based communication network (i.e., the Internet) incorporating public telephones. As shown, this network incorporates individual terminals 35 that connect to modems 36. These modems also connect to a public telephone network 37. Many of the connections to these global computing networks are via telephone access through telephone networks. The terminal user is connects to a network server 38 via the modem and telephone network. The server 38 could be from an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The server connects the user to the global computing network 39.
FIG. 4 is an illustration of a computer based communication network incorporating cellular telephones. In addition to this configuration, there can be other configurations that enable the mobile telephone user to access the Internet. This configuration is conceptually similar to FIG. 3. However, in this configuration, a mobile telephone 41 and not the terminal 35 serves as the communication means for the end user. The communication tower 42 connects the mobile telephone user with the telephone communication network 43. At this point, the server 44 provides the connection to the rest of the communication network 45.
New telephone designs for effecting telephone communication using the Internet are now being developed. Since the internet is basically free of charge, what the user pays for internet telephone communication is the charge based on the contract with the internet service provider and the charge for the call between the user and the internet service provider or the charge for the use of ISDN.
Although, the mobile telephone can be used as device to access the Internet, this device still has the primary purpose of enabling people to communication verbally or orally. The standard types of voice communications provided by the mobile telephone do not require the amount of bandwidth necessary transmit and received other types of data such as text data or graphics. Low bandwidth wireless telephone data connections limit the capabilities that could be made possible with a larger bandwidth data connection. It can be used to look up movie items, weather, or sports scores in a reasonable manner, but doing more advanced tasks, such as downloading maps or streaming audio is next to impossible. New technologies are constantly emerging that promise to solve the problem of low bandwidth, but will take large amount of money and time to deploy. The main drawback of these solutions is that they would be much more costly to the consumer.
For example, one mobile telephone company plans to build a $1 billion high-speed wireless network, but the cost for the service is $80/user. The characterization of frequency propagation (especially urban) was extremely important for the development of earlier mobile radio systems and paved the way for cellular. Early mobile radio systems used much lower frequencies than the 800 MHz band now used by most cellular systems.
Although, the advances in cellular telephone technology have enabled the user to connect the Internet and to perform various tasks and receive various types of information, the bandwidth limitations for these cellular telephones have hampered more expansion of the capabilities of the cellular telephone. Therefore, there remains a need for a system that will enable the cellular telephone to have the capabilities to connect to and transfer information from the Internet in a reliable and timely manner.